by James Smiley
What had this to do with my ghost? I recoiled from the vicar’s expanding face to gather my wits.
Gauging my reaction to his tangent, the vicar tried his hand at another awkward silence and I could see that our duel was not yet over. Indeed, it became obvious that a bargain was to be struck before any advice would be forthcoming. Frankly I had no objection to this, but to administer my adversary a dose of his own medicine I parried him with a neutral smile and a silence more audacious than any tried so far.
The Reverend Gittings, off balance at last, peered over his lenses at me curiously as if to check that I was not a smudge upon his spectacles, then asked lingeringly:
“I trust you will do me a small kindness then, Mr Jay?”
I could guess the nature of this kindness and parried him instantly with a caution.
“I am afraid that my influence upon the railway is very limited, vicar. Alas the directors of the South Exmoor company do not seek the moral guidance of stationmasters when formulating new timetables. Nevertheless I am at your disposal insofar as I am able, and will gladly convey to the Board any protest you may wish to make.”
Truth to tell, I was in favour of Sunday travel, but I did not fret upon this contentious subject because I knew that if the minister succeeded in preventing just one Sunday train from running he would be the first pedagogue to do so. Actually, he would be the second. The first, of course, was that famous Eton college headmaster who denied his town the convenience of Sunday trains by the most foolproof means imaginable. Arguing that it would be a danger to his boys, he dissuaded the mighty Great Western railway from constructing a line there in the first place!
The Vicar of Saint Martha believed that where moral persuasion failed it was necessary to separate the sinner from his weakness with an insuperable barrier, and in this endeavour he submitted his message of enlightenment, via me, to the railway’s Board of Directors.
“If the moral decline of our nation is to be checked, the Sabbath must be set aside exclusively for spiritual reflection,” he droned mournfully.
The vicar did not seem flattered that I required a pencil and paper to retain his profundity. However, our bargain struck, he called for my hat and stick and offered to escort me to the sacristy to view the parish records.
We were about to leave when the comely Mrs Gittings entered the room and declared that she had laid the table. Surprised to find her spouse in conference she gathered her wits and insisted upon laying an extra place for me, my gesticulations to the contrary counting for nothing. What else could I do but capitulate and accept graciously, even though this doomed me to more of the vicar’s moral lobbying. Relieved of my hat and stick again, I took directions for the dining room.
At the table I was not sure what like of repast lay before me, for it was somewhat late in the day for high tea yet a trifle early for dinner. The table was haphazard with bread, jam, and cake, but also venison. Venison is no stranger to the Exmoor table, you understand, but preserved in aspic rather than hung is another matter. Stranger still were the huge jars of pickled eggs, gherkins and onions that lay among the garnishes plucked from the garden. Indeed I had never seen so many comestibles suspended in vinegar. As the vicar prised open one of these jars, having accelerated Grace to get to it, I resisted the temptation to watch him pursue an onion with his fork. Instead I made polite conversation with his infinitely more sociable wife.
At the close of our alimentary odyssey I was escorted across the glebe and admitted to the church. Here, much to my dismay, studies verified both the burial of a lost soul, quote: ‘… on common land in the shadow of Splashgate hill,’ and the subsequent unearthing of his remains during construction of the railway in Eighteen-Fifty-Nine. The baneful outcast so buried was alleged to have murdered children, terrorised all who entered Bessam forest and, by evil practises, perverted the course of justice. There was also an account of the heathen’s slow, agonising death, poisoned by persons unknown. The reading would have chilled the blood in any God fearing man.
Upon stepping out into the daylight, digesting the meaning of what I had read, I received from the vicar an uncharacteristically generous flow of information regarding my wellbeing. Like a man possessed he effused all manner of warnings about the danger to my soul from this evil-doer.
“By not attending church regularly, Mr Jay, you are as a lamb separated from the Lord’s flock,” he enlightened me. “These disturbances you are experiencing are the opening of the wolf’s jaw and you shall be lost at sea unless you sail into the harbour of Saint Martha without delay.”
Mostly I was bewildered by this pronouncement, consequently did not take sufficient fright.
I shook hands with the vicar and said goodbye under the sombre overhang of a yew tree, then strode pensively across the graveyard to the lichgate. Thereafter, taking a shortcut to the station, I followed a footpath alongside the cemetery towards Harvey’s farm. Here, alas, I came to grief when my boots collided and brought me to a stumbling halt. Stopped thus, my head wobbled with the minister’s mixed metaphors and lolloped to one side. I might have guessed that the cleric’s words of comfort would bring no comfort but I had not envisaged such delayed effect. I rested my haunches upon the cemetery wall and mopped my brow.
Shortly, rejuvenated by the soft evening light and serenaded by a solitary blackbird, I resumed my journey home. But scarcely had I got to my feet when I heard rapid sniffing. I looked to my left and spotted, between a tall tombstone and a terrace of almshouses, a ghostly surplice over-arched by dark firs. The vicar had been watching me.
“I look forward to seeing you at evensong,” he crooned in the manner of a commercial traveller closing a deal.
Inadvisably, perhaps, I did not attend church this eventide, for I felt sure that the Lord understood a railway’s prior claim upon a stationmaster’s time, early closure of Upshot station on Sundays providing me with the solitude I needed to cast up the books. This job took hours, for it involved reckoning up the week’s coal and oil takings and checking that all the freight accounts were settled, and for some reason there would always be that pesky truckle of cheese or tod of wool unaccounted for. In addition, the passenger receipts had to be tallied with all the ticket stubs. If there had been any fiddling or blunders during the week, this was when I discovered it.
My labours were interrupted by a suspicious character lurking among the trees behind the stables. I spotted the intruder while returning from the Coal office with a bundle of waybills and, needless to say, he did not stop when I challenged him. Instead, with rain reducing visibility, the sneak-thief was able to run off and melt away into the blurry landscape beyond the station.
Needless to say, theft of railway property was considered legitimate sport in some quarters, and with this in mind I resolved to summon the constable of Blodcaster next day. To facilitate this I noted down the trespasser’s appearance, insofar as I was able, and observed that in stature he looked much like Diggory, having scurried away with the same gangling agility. Of course, it was inconceivable that Diggory would steal anything but the coincidence was useful because when asked for a description of the intruder I would merely have to point a finger.
As the hours slipped away I completed my bookkeeping by the fitful light of a table-lamp, during which time the rain ceased. But with the humidity rising, the barometer falling, and a continuous rumble roaming among the hills, it was evident that an electrical storm was approaching.
Glad to have dipped my pen for the last time, my lucubrations completed, I sealed my ink pot, applied some blotting paper to my figures, and peered out of my office at the sky. All above was prismatic with electricity, the muggy air caustic with ozone, and through the ever present whirlpool of moths around the gas-lamp above my door I witnessed the dark rump of Upshott wood flicker. The trees there became a bleached mosaic lit by a writhing snake-pit of lightning.
Now began the music of the storm, its symphony opening with pinging milk churns and the growing patter of fat raindr
ops striking the platform. Then, with a precipitous roar, the occasional glint became one glossy curtain and I agitated the vortex of moths violently as I dashed back to my office.
Upshott village was situated about five-hundred feet above sea level, within an arc of tors reaching a further five hundred feet, and in this location the electricity in the air was palpable. Even in my office, with the sash window open a storm’s electrical charge could raise the hairs upon the back of my hand.
I cannot relate how thankful I was that I did not have the company of the spinster woman just now. In a tempest of this magnitude the presence of a scaremonger spinning diabolical yarns among cloves of garlic would have frightened me out of my wits. Indeed, so violent was the storm that in the pulsating light I thought I saw her prancing to and fro, laughing hysterically as puddings disappeared.
Upon retiring for the night I found my bed unaccountably lumpy, and despite my best efforts I could not adapt to it. When eventually I did fall asleep I was woken immediately by a clap of thunder the like of which I had never heard before, and my search for a comfortable repose began again. This, however, was nought compared to what lay in store, for I discovered that Miss Blake had the power to visit dread upon a stationmaster even in her absence.
You see, as I lay there curled up like an infant I sensed that I was not alone, and compelled by this feeling I opened one eye to the twitching darkness. What I beheld, to my utter disbelief, was the spinster woman dancing around my bedroom cheek-to-cheek with her heinous corpse, the charcoal burner. Contrary to all reason, she was gliding about as effortlessly as a sprite while he, with the obvious disadvantage of being dead, was dragging his feet clumsily, scarcely able to keep up.
With my bed shaking I opened my other eye, hopeful that full scrutiny of the apparition would dissipate it, but instead found the detail of my uninvited guests all the more stark. In a multiple flicker of light I observed that Miss Blake was wearing ballet pumps and the risen charcoal burner, with all the style of a peasant, a tattered, fustian waistcoat with dyed horsehair trousers. Another twitch of light revealed the ill mannered corpse to be cavorting about my bedroom in his muddy boots.
Until now I had not been entirely convinced of the couple’s physical reality, but the charcoal burner had matched his trousers to a gaily coloured Glengarry soft-cap and I knew that not even in my most fevered imaginings would I have conjured up such a tasteless phantom. I prepared to bolt before the romancing intruders could react to my presence, but suddenly there were three of them, making evasion look impossible. Alas, as the couple’s circulations accelerated to the jarring strains of an accordion, its odious player established beside my wardrobe, I succumbed to hopelessness.
Later, with the benefit of hindsight, I could see that I had fallen asleep and was dreaming. However, I did not know this at the time and consequently let out a pitiful wail. Unfortunately my cry for help drew only the attention of the cadaver and he turned upon me with startling malevolence. Shrinking from his towering presence, his grisly face resembling crinkled paper scribbled with charcoal, I controlled my voice sufficient to reminded him that I was a stationmaster. Unimpressed, he glowered at me and raised an axe high in the air.
I had no idea where this axe came from, for I kept no such tool in my room, but dreams have little respect for logic and it shames me to say that I screamed like a woman. Next, through vision blurred by perspiration, I saw the axe begin its descent and was spurred to jump up like a marionette and fight back. Quickly overwhelmed by my assailant’s superior strength I fell back to the bed and there prayed aloud, saddened that I would never see Mrs Smith again, and curious that I felt no pain when the axe sank into my face. Nevertheless the sickening crunch caused me to yodel, and although my noisy demise was only a small part of the nightmare it proved sufficient to make ornaments rattle, which in turn woke me up with a start.
Composing myself I lit my bedside candle, shook my head to halt the sound of the accordion, and surveyed my room. The axe and its user had gone, and to my even greater relief, when I looked in my mirror I saw that my face was intact, although it now resembled snow melting over a rusty drain. Feeling no better than I looked I lay in bed afraid to go back to sleep. For if Serena Blake could enrage my imagination to this fevered pitch then the charcoal burner would be waiting for me.
Next morning, not surprisingly, I forgot to report to the Blodcaster constable the more corporeal intruder of the previous night, and a decline towards nervous debility took hold. During one loss of reason I even became convinced that my staff were behaving abnormally. Humphrey, for example, had become distant. Jack also. And Mr Troke appeared stranger than ever, if the margin for this existed. As for Diggory, well, the young lad simply could not look me in the eye, as if something was so badly wrong that he dared not speak of it. And at every turn I interrupted whispered conversations about a curse. To deepen my anxiety, in the station house each night I was kept awake by unearthly noises; scuffling, scratching, whimpering, heavy breathing, and rapid tapping. Something very peculiar was abroad, of this there was no doubt, and I was the one it wanted. Most baffling of all was a remark made by Mr Troke one morning after I had forbidden him utterance of the word ‘curse’ while on duty.
“Don’t turn a blind eye to it, Mr Jay,” he cautioned me. “I’ve seen stationmasters dragged away from their sanity while pretending it never happened.”
Two further developments added to my misery. My appointment with the Disciplinary panel was imminent, and I had seen nothing of the adorable Mrs Smith just when I most needed the sunshine of her presence. I had reached such ebb that I even missed the disingenuous affections of Rose Macrames.
Having put away a glass or two of ale at The Shunter, perhaps three or four, I concluded that the station house had been colonised by rats. I made a note to myself to purchase a wedge of cheese and a vial of poison to snuff out the nonsense once and for all, and by bedtime the station was a death-trap for rodents. Despite the rumblings of another storm my bed seemed less lumpy, my eyes closed more willingly, and my thoughts slipped the shackles of logic to play silly games. Within seconds I was in a sunny meadow picnicking with Mrs Smith.
With the blow of an axe, lightning split the darkness, thunder shook my window, and I was wrenched brutally from a sweet kiss. The storm was passing directly overhead, its cloudburst now pounding the station roof with the roar of a rapturous audience beneath an ebony sky fizzling with electricity. Yet despite this tumult I heard another sound, a quite indescribable one which did not, heaven forefend, come from a rat. It was more like the wail of a banshee or the drawing of a bow across an out-of-tune violin, and it followed each clap of thunder like an encore. Beginning as a moan it would rise sharply in pitch then fall again to become an uncanny, wolf-like howl. I prayed this was a nightmare. Alas it was not.
To promote consciousness I sat upright and regulated my breathing, and when the ringing in my ears had stopped I whispered a short prayer before lighting the oil lamp that I had swapped for my bedside candle. In its orb of sallow light I steeled myself and climbed out of bed to face this dreadful thing, whatever it was, to end my misery.
Leaving every lamp in my wake at full gas and carefully avoiding the creaky timber that had betrayed my presence last time, I made my way to the ground floor. Here, at the foot of the stares, my advance ended abruptly in horror. A stark, white face stared out of the wall at me with such sorrow that I felt the need to console it. It was a repentant soul, a spectre grim with misgiving, its eyes rimmed with scarlet remorse and dilated like black pebbles. Yet also it was a familiar face. Indeed, had I not caught sight of myself in the hall mirror I should never have realised how repentant I was at not having appointed a station dog when I had the opportunity. An alert, four-legged friend would have been mightily welcome just now.
Before resuming my advance I studied my reflection a little further and it struck me that my diabolical appearance vouchsafed me against any malevolent entity. Even should I come face-to-fa
ce with a hoard of marauding goblins it would be they, not I, who fled. Nevertheless, being a man of a practical disposition I had also equipped myself to face adversaries of a more corporeal nature. For upon leaving my quarters I had collected my shotgun and loaded both barrels with rock-salt. This time, should anyone or anything menace me I would administer a dose of medicine.
The thunder was abating, and with it the uncanny wailing, so that by the time my search was underway I could barely detect a whimper. Most of the time even this feeble sound was masked by rain stampeding upon the platform canopy, and gurgling rones. Eventually the whimpering ceased altogether and once again, wondering if my torment would ever end, I was forced to retire empty-handed. Leaving every gas-lamp in the house at full hiss I huddled beneath my blanket and reviewed all the advice I had received. Perhaps my salvation did lie in garlic and mixed metaphors.
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Chapter Twenty-Three — Morse code sickness
Mondays were always busy at Upshott station. The treadmill of events would begin at 5.05am with the arrival of the ‘down’ Mail, and to commence this recollection I shall synchronise the chime of the station clock with the chime of a distant train whistle and draw your attention to several empty pitchers. These enamelled vessels, waiting to be filled with water for the station at Busy Linton, were set out upon Platform One like a line of expectant ducks. Mindful of the last time they were neglected I became tetchy and called for Diggory, my patience having been eroded by sleep deprivation. I was joined only by Humphrey.
“Why does that boy not attend to his duties?” I snarled at the porter. “Where does he get to lately?”
“I don’t rightly know, sir,” Humphrey replied melodically. “Arr, here be the lad now.”
Diggory, red faced, emerged from the station house, saw me watching him and set about loading a luggage trolley in a feeble attempt to look busy. I summoned him and transferred him immediately to the empty pitchers.